


somewhere it hides a well

by chidorinnn



Category: Persona 2, Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Crossover, M/M, no beta we die like maya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29424033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: Goro remembers.A boy he’s not supposed to recognize grips him by the shoulders, ready to push him out of the crashing blimp, andGoro remembers.He knows, without having to look at the mop of curly hair, that this boy’s name is Akira Kurusu. He knows that at some point, though he doesn’t quite remember when, they played together at the shrine at the foot of Mount Iwato – alongside the woman that stands behind him, with the silver hair and the pins that push it away from her face.He knows that he hurt this boy very badly at one point, but only because he believed that Akira had been the one to hurt him instead. Why did he ever think that? Who told him that?
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44
Collections: 21 plus akeshuake server valentines 2021 event





	somewhere it hides a well

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for the 21+ akeshuake discord server valentine's day event :D the prompts i chose were:  
> flavor: pining  
> chocolate coating: other persona/smt crossover  
> garnish: rescue
> 
> hope y'all enjoy this attempt at copy/pasting the persona 5 cast into persona 2 circumstances :D

Goro remembers.

A boy he’s not supposed to recognize grips him by the shoulders, ready to push him out of the crashing blimp, and _Goro remembers_.

He knows, without having to look at the mop of curly hair, that this boy’s name is Akira Kurusu. He knows that at some point, though he doesn’t quite remember when, they played together at the shrine at the foot of Mount Iwato – alongside the woman that stands behind him, with the silver hair and the pins that push it away from her face.

He knows that he hurt this boy very badly at one point, but only because he believed that Akira had been the one to hurt him instead. Why did he ever think that? Who told him that?

It’s not something Goro will remember like this – half-hanging out of a crashing blimp, either on his way to plunge to his death or be incinerated in the ensuing explosion – and so, against all reason, he reaches in his pocket for his father’s old lighter and presses it into Akira’s hands.

“Take it,” he says as firmly as he can, given the circumstances.

“But this is—” Akira starts.

“No,” says Goro, shaking his head. “I want you to have it.”

Akira’s face crumples as his fingers close around the lighter – and Goro’s not quite sure how long he’s known this boy, but he can be reasonably sure that such an expression has _never_ belonged on his face. “Okay.”

And then, Akira _pushes_ – and Goro knows no more.

* * *

(There was a girl sitting at the shrine today. She was older than all of them, with silver hair pinned to the side with a red hair bauble as she glares down at a binder, a pencil clutched tightly in one hand.

Technically, Goro should have expected this outcome – though the people who worked at the shrine were all too happy to let a group of kids in Featherman masks play here, the shrine was still very much a public place. It made sense that other people would stop by here, from time to time. Still, it was a weird place to sit and do homework. Despite the ferocity of her glare, it didn’t look like she would yell at them to be quiet anytime soon.

“She looks kind of scary, doesn’t she?” Pink Argus asked, whispering it to Goro too loudly.

“Shh!” he hissed back. “She’ll hear us!”

“Perhaps we should ask her to leave?” asked White Swallow, tilting his head to the side.

“No way!” countered Yellow Owl. “That’s mean.”

But Red Eagle, despite everything, approached her. They’d kept a Blue Swan mask from the summer festival, because Pink’s parents had been nice enough to buy two – but no one had claimed it. It was that mask that Red clutched tightly in his hands, as he walked slowly, but purposefully, towards the girl.

“Um,” he said, and very bravely did not flinch when the girl turned her glare to him instead. “Do you want to play with us?”

Sharply, the girl averted her gaze. She wasn’t quite glaring anymore, but there was still tension there – collecting in her arms, as her grip tightened on the pencil in her hand. “I’m busy,” she said, stiffly.

Red nodded. “Okay.” Then, he set the Blue Swan mask down, gently, next to her. “Here… just in case you change your mind.”

_I won’t_ went unsaid – the girl would never verbalize it, no matter how many times she returned to the shrine, or how many times Red would set that Blue Swan mask down next to her.

And then one day, against all reason, she took the mask. It was ill-fitting on her face – too small, awkwardly fitted around her nose and pressing into her forehead in a way that made her hair stick up on end – but it was enough for Pink and Yellow to start cheering, as they grabbed each of her arms and dragged her into the group.

Her name, she told them, was Sae Niijima. Her father was a policeman, and frequently away from home – which left her singularly responsible for her younger sister, a little girl around Goro’s age named Makoto. Why that sister wasn’t here at the shrine with her, none of them asked – in the same way nobody asked why Yellow would sometimes leave early, just so that he could get home before his dad got there first – in the same way that nobody asked why White would hide, sometimes, around the time his teacher would come to pick him up.

It spoke to a history that Sae-san evidently wanted to leave at home – and so they would not force it from her. Here at the shrine, she was nobody’s big sister but theirs – and that was enough for them.)

* * *

In the days that follow, Sumaru City slowly stumbles back into some semblance of _normal_. Goro’s not quite sure what happened, exactly – the city summarily labels it as a mass hallucination, which he knows, from reading reports of the incident in Mikage-cho just a few years prior, is bullshit. He knows that something happened to him, specifically, but he can’t quite put his finger on what it was, exactly.

He walks without thinking, and finds himself at the Alaya Shrine. He knows, logically, that it’s been years since he was last here. He knows, without having to think too hard on it, that the last time he was here had been for a summer festival. He’d come with his mother, after months of begging her to take the necessary time off work and go with him – and she had, in the end.

But there is another truth to this place that lingers just under the surface: the reality that he’s been here many, many times before. He knows, but cannot think about it for too long before the inconsistencies become too evident, that he used to play here, at one point. That he had a group of friends who shared this space with him – _close_ friends, closer than any he’s ever had.

He knows, but cannot think about it for too long before the inconsistencies become too evident, that his pocket shouldn’t be so light – that in the absence of his father’s lighter, there should be something else there. The prospect of it fills him with the same sort of painful nostalgia that had overtaken him, that day he had to jump out of a crashing blimp. It was there in that boy Akira’s pained expression, as he pushed him. It was there in the face of that woman standing with him – curious and calculating, as if trying to understand if Goro himself was a piece to a puzzle she’d been trying to solve for a long time.

… Sae Niijima. That was her name, wasn’t it? She’d introduced herself, after all – but that, too, is another truth that Goro simply knows, even though he probably shouldn’t.

He paces the length of the shrine and, against all reason, imagines it engulfed by flames. The image comes to him unbidden, unwanted in its ghastliness – because he knows, but cannot think about it for too long before the inconsistencies become too evident, that there is someone trapped inside. He knows, but cannot think about it for too long before the inconsistencies become too evident, that whoever is trapped there is in this situation because of him – but he’d never meant to hurt anyone. That has to be true, right?

-a hand falls on his shoulder, fingers curling around it as he’s swiveled around to face Sae Niijima herself. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says instead of greeting him.

“Oh, Niijima-san!” Goro greets her with more cheer than he feels. It feels wrong to call her that – but he refuses to think about why that is. “So nice to see you again!”

The look she gives him is… uncomfortable. It’s as if she can see through his skin, into his very bones – as if there isn’t a single secret he can keep from her, because she knows them all before he can verbalize them himself. It doesn’t make sense for someone he’s only known for a few days to look at him like that – but he’s known Sae-san for a lot longer than that, hasn’t he?

“Listen,” she says, her voice oddly heavy. “Whatever it is that you remember… you can’t act on it. I know, it’s just about the hardest thing in the world… but you can’t, okay? Or this world will fall apart.”

… fall apart, like it very nearly did just this past week. “Is it such a bad thing to remember?” he finds himself asking, anyway. “They were good memories, right? So why is it so necessary to _forget_?”

“Goro…” His name is oddly heavy on her tongue – weighted there by a history he’s supposed to forget. It’s not fair that Sae-san has to bear it all on her own, without his help – because that was always supposed to be his job, wasn’t it? To watch out for her because she worked so hard, and would sometimes forget to do it herself. It was a promise he was never supposed to forget, even though he’s not allowed to remember it here. “That… doesn’t mean you can’t begin anew. Only that you can’t go back to what once was.”

… oh. It makes sense, logically speaking – and Sae-san has tried to be many things, as far as he remembers, but the most important of them all is _logical_. It’s only that there’s nothing _logical_ about a world torn asunder by the sheer power of rumors – a demise that Goro himself had accelerated, on the basis of a delusion. There’s nothing _logical_ about the way that no burn scars exist under Sae-san’s black coat, even though the memory of her trapped in the shrine as it was set ablaze refuses to let Goro rest, even in a world where it should no longer exist.

… but he can begin anew. There’s nothing wrong with that. “That applies to the two of us as well, by the way,” he says, very stubbornly.

Sae smiles, and it’s just as he remembers. He’s not supposed to, but he lets himself indulge in this, just this once. “Yeah,” she answers. “I’d like that.”

* * *

(“Listen,” Sae-san would tell them with a very serious expression on her face, on the days when she’d be too busy with homework to play with them. “If you want your dreams to come true, then you need to work for them. That’s the way this world works.”

“Of course!” White would always agree – because this was something he’d heard from his teacher too many times to count. White loved his teacher very much, though some of the stories he would tell, about living with him, were a little scary.

“But you always work so hard, Big Sis!” Yellow would inevitably point out. “You should take it easy sometimes, yeah?” It was a sentiment born from the same place as the smile his mother would give them all, whenever she was able to come and pick him up.

But Sae-san would just shake her head. “Dad and Makoto need my help. I can’t let them down.”

“But aren’t they going to worry if you work too hard?” Pink would ask, which was her way of saying that _she_ worried about Sae-san, sometimes.

“You said we need to work if we want our dreams to come true, right?” Red would ask in that very smooth, very convincing voice of his. “But working too hard isn’t good, either. It’s important to rest sometimes.”

Sae-san would look at them all, biting her lip as she guiltily set aside her binders and her textbooks, and then slowly donned the Blue Swan mask. “Oh… I suppose one game couldn’t hurt.”

And one day, she had a specific game in mind:

“There’s one I’ve been meaning to try out,” said Sae-san. “It’s rumored that this can help you see your future self, but… I don’t know. It sounds stupid.”

“It’s _not_ stupid,” Yellow insisted.

“Well…” said Sae-san, fiddling with a strand of her hair, “… have any of you ever heard of the Persona game?”)

* * *

When Goro sees him again, Akira no longer remembers. Every expression is familiar – the confusion as Akira suddenly notices that his pocket is heavier than it should be, the realization that what lies there is not something he remembers acquiring. He pulls out the lighter, and frowns at it for a long moment. “When did I…?”

… it’s not the same. What they once had can never exist in this world – but that doesn’t mean something new cannot, between them. “Ah,” says Goro, reaching for the lighter with no intention of actually taking it. “That’s mine. I must have dropped it somewhere.”

There’s no longer any recognition in Akira’s eyes as he hands the lighter back – but no pain, either. That alone makes this worth it. “Sorry,” he says, sheepishly. “I’m not sure when I picked this up, exactly.”

Goro smiles. “That’s fine,” he replies. “No harm done.”

Logically, he knows that the boy who stands before him is little more than a stranger. This is not the Akira he remembers, nor is he himself any known quantity to Akira – and yet, the thought of moving forward in this world without him is… unacceptable.

“Actually,” says Goro, “… would you like to keep it?”

It’s an odd question to ask, of someone he’s not supposed to know – but Akira’s eyes go wide with something that is not quite recognition, but something of an acknowledgment all the same. His hand is soft, pliant, as Goro uncurls Akira’s fingers and closes them over the lighter. “It’s strange…” says Akira, averting his eyes to the side. “I feel like I’ve met you before, but… I’m not sure where.”

Slowly, Goro releases him. “I’m Goro,” he introduces himself.

Akira smiles, and pushes the lighter gently back into his pocket. “Akira,” he says, quietly.

**Author's Note:**

> a list of persona 2 parallels featured in this fic:
> 
>   * goro akechi | jun kurosu
>   * akira kurusu | tatsuya suou
>   * sae niijima | maya amano
> 

> 
> a list of featherman roles:
> 
>   * goro akechi: black condor
>   * akira kurusu: red eagle
>   * ryuji sakamoto: yellow owl
>   * ann takamaki: pink argus
>   * yusuke kitagawa: white swallow
>   * sae niijima: blue swan
> 

> 
> where's makoto? i'd imagine that she occupies a very similar role to ulala in this AU - not part of the _primary_ innocent sin friend group, exactly, but still a very important character.
> 
> thanks for reading! :)


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